BTW, my blog does link generously to female bloggers.

Figuring out how to get memes and links passed from the political blogs to the sports blogs, sex blogs and other blog communities will be the next big breakthrough.

It seemed that the only "diverse" candidate that was promoted in the blogoshere was Obama but he was already a sure thing...then there was Salazar who is basically a wingnut in Dem drag so I am not counting him as being "diverse".

Then there was that horrible front pager full of racist innuendo about Donna Brazille.

As for women... it is hard to gather support from women when you call supporters of pro-choice  "ideological purists"...

That being said it still is a hell of a lot better that the msm but far from being perfect or inclusive.

Also, I think the strength of the linkage arguement is overplayed. BlogPulse did their review in in Sept=Nov, 2004, during the run-up to the election, so that the election-minded blogs were linking together more often is no great surprise. Outside the hyper-election period, I think it's much less of a division; but I'd agree, Drum, DeLong, Yglesias, TPM, Tapped, Crooked Timber, I just read every so often (though TPM with the SS coverage has been a must), and it's probably vice versa as well. This is a zero-sum activity, and as a blogger, I spend more time thinking and wandering technorati and google, than I do with a set pattern of blogs I read toward producing reaction. Plus, regarding BlogPulse, their assumption there is that all blogs are the same, while we know that the Scoop platform here, and even bigger, on Daily Kos, radically changes the linkage layout; given what the diaries do to promulgate  connection and opinion within the blogospehre.

Information, expertise and analysis of superior quality were (and still are) coming out of sites like Kos, MyDD, Digby, Left Coaster, Pandagon - as an academic I was (and am) more interested in what comes out of these sites then the usual tendentious "conventional wisdom" (an oxymoron if there ever was one) coming from the "approved" sites.

I believe it's a mistake to label this dichotomy as "activist" and "academic". I prefer "activist" and "hand wringers".  

• I read both sets of "left" blogs, as well as some voices of moderation on the center-right
  
• My personal blog is more focused on social software and activist technology than electoral politics.
  
• The political blogging that I do is more focused on "cyberliberties" issues -- see http://savemuniwireless.org -- that's the effort to save city-supported networking in Texas from the predatory, anti-competitive practices of the incumbent telcos
  
• My blogs are part of blog networks that are cross-linked by region (Texas) and issue, rather than the tier of "a-list" mainstream political bloggers.
  
• I think the focus on the Josh Marshall/Andrew Sullivan/Kos/MyDD "top tier" political bloggers is part of an unjustified focus on the "a-list" which ignores other networks of blogs with lower traffic and higher focus.  
  
• My work on cyberliberties issues such as municipal wireless and electronic voting is aimed more at building a "different majority" for good policy, rather than sticking to traditional party lines.
  
• This "different majority" approach is very different from the "split-the-difference", "corporate toady" approach of the so-called moderate democrats who sell out sick people to credit card companies. It involves creating a strong vision and building non-traditional alliances between, for example, the rural small towns, urban low-income neigborhoods, and high-tech districts that support municipal networking.

I read the mainstream blogs, but choose to post on the topics where I feel I have something distinctive to say. For example, there seem to be enough people saying that running the country trillions of dollars into debt is a bad way to change social security, and banning the teaching of evolution is a really bad direction for the country.

I find the vitriol on the populist sites on both sides ("rethugs", "moonbats") hard to take and rather nauseating. On the right, I usually can't take it at all ("culture of death", "traitors"). On the left, I have limited patience for it, and feel zero motivation to contribute to the spitball contests in Kos comments, though I appreciate some of the original reporting and analysis in the posts.

In foreign policy the left center more hawkish view in academia has not embraced the blogs like they could. They have not seen the power in the collective process. It is hard to stay on topic unless you have the time staff or money to engage in it over a long time.

Interesting thing I ran across comes to mind on this fact. Leon Fuerth has been running a graduate school project that is interesting on forward engagement. It is not just looking at military problems but world problems and even changes in what it means to be human.

If for know other reasons than the finacial these kind of projects have not been made public.

Also academic writers also feel that the should error on the side of moderation in some cases to keep controversy at bay.

I've always been suspicious there a link between OCD and blogging. Links between behaviors like being likely to type for 18 hours a day and OCD seems a reasonable possibilty.

;-D

I think it just degree a political opinion.

When we talk about democratic politicians, we argue over how much to give up in order to support a candidate. We don't really find many truly progressive politicians.

Generally speaking the moderates would be fearful of a shift to the left just as much as a shift to the right in the democratic party. When they say 'DLC douche I'm supporting is the only electable choice', they really mean, 'he's my guy, and your guy won't win anyway, so stop whining'. I think most dKos and MyDD people would welcome a shift to the left.

As to the issue of race, ethnicity and gender : I cover all three bases. So you can imagine my level of frustration when [ a so-called progressive blogger who will remain unknown ] says he doesn't read women bloggers because they don't write about things that interest him. Or when [ another so-called progressive blogger who will remain unknown ] says he's too busy writing about the issues of the day to do anything else.

EXCUSE ME?

Isn't the Schiavo case about abortion? Isn't the so called "culture of life" about bio-power and fascism? Why wouldn't the cultural hypocrisy over "stay at home moms" be intrinsically related to elderly issues like health care benefits, social security and "right to die" issues? And would race and ethnicity somehow color all those conversations?

That's why I call them "so-called progressives" because even among the left you can find Neanderthals.

Lazyness and prejudice cannot be changed. But for sites like yours, DailyKos and others, there are straight-forward, web desing options that could be implemented to build a better blue network.

Then there is the real, simple shaking of hands through meetups that people can put together; etc.

Let me finish the dang thing and post it.

Let me just give y'all a heads up on the Brown Bloggers meetup that's coming up here in NYC on April 10th.

The ironic being, that there's a lot of diversity there.

     Allow me to introduce myself...

     Most people label me as "white", but I am native American enough to always check "other".

     I am also male.

     A black workmate once told me: "You are the most colorblind white man I have ever known".

     And he was accurate- I'm <funny> that way.

     I am also gender blind within reason. (I do not ignore interesting women in my proximity...)

     But on the net, I simply ignore ethnicity and gender- or more accurately- I am too oblivious to note such info.

     So I am surprised that in this day and age, when you can blog under any identity you chose, that in a medium where anyone can claim to be anything, there are still people stupid enough to care about ethnicity and gender.

     I can claim to be a high lady mucky-muck in a black Amazon tribe, and no one could possibly challenge it.

     I believe that only on the net has Martin Luther King achieved his dream where people are judged strictly on the content of their charactor- because the color of their skin (and gender) are impossile to verify- and therefore meaningless.

     I make no assumptions regarding ethnicity and gender, and I know enough to ignore such unverifiable dinstinctions.

     If I wanted, I could blog as a female one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater, and I could post a picture of a female one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater.

     Any moron who believed that does not deserve to live even in the most liberal of environments.

     I follow only the blogs that share my philosophy, and I don't give a flying frig in a rubber doughnut as to what ethnicity or gender the blogger claims.

     So IMHO, bloggers should adopt ethnicity and gender nuetral monikers, and simply be judged by the content of their charactor.

     But that's just >my< opinion <shrug>.

     Thanks,

     Liberal Patriot

There's nothing 'activist' about sitting on your butt and churning out posts five times a day.

-- From an academic who moonlights as an activist

The following posts at Big Brass Blog, covered the gender issue, addressing Kevin Drum's apparent inability to find female political bloggers worth linking to. Drum actually corresponded with Shakespeare's Sister over these:

• Bloggrrls
  
  
• Bloggrrls (Again)
  
  
• Get Real
  
  
• Bloggrrls: Armed with the Truth Edition
  
  

Here's a snippet from "Get Real". [Drum eventually copped to being the author of some of the quotes referenced below.]

We're not going to get anywhere as long as the male bloggers who post about this issue continue to do so with such appalling intellectual dishonesty. In private emails, male bloggers who publicly wring their hands about how to solve the problem of the dearth of women bloggers in the upper echelon, will admit that the reality is the difficulty of finding women worth linking to.

Women don't give me much linkable material.

Women write on subjects that don't interest me.

Women don't know how to compromise on abortion rights.

Why don't women post about Social Security? It affects them, too.

Women don't write commentary, don't come up with new ideas.

Gender politics is all secondary issues.



The day I see any one of those notions let loose for open debate on one of the blogs authored by a man who holds those opinions is the day we might actually get somewhere with this discussion. Until then, take all the disingenuous bullshit philosophizing about whether women can hack the blogosphere, the percentage of women in the blogosphere, and all the rest of it, and shove it up your asses.

I'm willing to have a long and interesting conversation with anyone who's willing to tell me point blank that I and other women bloggers don't write on subjects that interest them and don't give them much linkable material. I'm willing to discuss it for as long as it takes to convince them that gender politics (including both women's issues and gay rights issues) are not secondary issues to half their party, and that the idea of anyone calling him- or herself a political blogger who ignores political issues of primacy to large swaths of their party is patently absurd. I'm willing to have a talk about the deeply ingrained and insidious sexism that is really at the root cause of this problem.

But as long as there's a collective reluctance to replace the faux suppositions with the real prejudices in the navel-gazing posts, there's no one with whom to have that conversation. Except, of course, my fellow bloggrrls, none of whom ever actually believed it's anything other than the same old tired biases, anyway. Being more creative at disguising them behind your wide-eyed mystification about where all the women are isn't clever; it's pathetic.

• Taking on the big, bad, blogging dogs so we can pee on the political hydrant too
  
  
• Thin skin of the Technorati Testosteroni. (This post that has set off a firestorm of passionate feedback, including drive-by comments by Steve Gilliard and Atrios -- the latter was the topic of discussion

*
[I happen to be minority, a woman, gay and do political blogging (Pam's House Blend), and made it Koufax semis this year in two categories. The only larger blog that blogrolled me, btw, was AmericaBlog -- John deserved to be on more people's blogrolls before the Gannon thing broke open.]

And I'm hoping you're not suggesting a sort of "affirmative action" for women where you purposely link to womens' blogs just because they're women.

The success of blogs, is that the gender/race of the writer is irrelevant.  

One of the great promises of the internet, which has largely been ignored in this debate, is the democratization of the internet.

Remove the commercial component, in which you have some people who blog as a part of their jobs, or those who self-identify, and their blog is a part of their identification, such as Uppity-Negro, what are you left with.

Ultimately a bunch of faceless individuals who pound at their keyboards for as little as a few minutes per week, or as much as a bunch of hours per day.

Then there is the "dominant link hierarchy" that some like to pontificate about.  My blog is on the blogroll of 4 blogs.  None of them are named Eschaton, DailyKos, TalkingPointsMemo, etc.  Again, part of the democratization of the internet, was supposed to reduce the effect of a small group of individuals essentially directing to a large group where to look, what to read, etc.  However, it seems a part of human nature is to be directed where to look, what to read.  But, does that mean that people like Atrios, Kos, Josh Marshall, et al have some obligation to point to me, or any other blogger?

Obviously some think that it does.  This whole discussion would not have started were it not for the belief that Atrios, or any other blogger with a large readership, has an obligation to me as a reader, or me as a blogger trying to get noticed.  

When it comes to the representation of groups other than white males, look at internet demographics.  For many years the primary user of the internet, and primary content creator was the white male.  While the user base is starting to spread to other demographic groups, who is still the primary content creator?  

Women and non-white males are beginning to create content on the internet, and as that content enters the internet "conscience" (for lack of a better term) everyone will certainly benefit from it.  But in a general interest political website, such as Kos or Eschaton, what will these other demographics bring?

Unfortunately, part of what I see is that non-white-males need attention paid to

Unfortunately, part of what I see is that non-white-males need attention paid to because they are not white, or not male.

I guess I am living in a bit of a utopia when I say that the quality of the writing should dictate the attention paid, rather than the gender/race of the writer.